Tuesday, October 22, 2013

St. Marks, Florida - October 22, 2013

We are back in St. Marks and so I thought I would share a little bit of St. Marks with you.  St. Marks is a quaint little fishing town conveniently located approximately 20 miles south of Tallahassee.    We are moored at the Lynn Family Marina.



 
                  The Lynn family have been fishing and crabbing for many years. Obviously it was not crabbing season when I took these pictures a couple weeks ago as evidenced by all the crab pots in the yard.  I see they are now loading all these pots back onto their boats for the start of the new season.   The town kicks off the new season with an annual Stone Crab Festival which is scheduled for this coming weekend.  We have been asked to have the Archimedes present for show.


I took my camera with me one morning as Radar and I walked around taking in some of the sites.
 
This is painted on the road right where a group of locals gather on Friday or Saturday nights for an evening around the fire pit.  I wonder if it's there to give them the direction home when the evening is over!  For us, we would head South East to the Arc!
 
 
Crab pots, anchors and hausers are commonly used for yard decorations.
 
 
 
 
Tallahassee - St. Marks Railroad Trail
 
(Excerpt from Wikipedia - St. Marks, Florida)

"A railroad often cited as Florida's first connected the port of St. Marks with the territorial capital, Tallahassee, some 20 miles inland. The line was constructed about 1836, and until the Civil War it served in the export of Middle Florida's cotton through St. Marks.

Today the attraction of St. Marks for boaters, fishermen, and seafood lovers preserves a strong relationship with Tallahassee (as does the location of a generating plant for Tallahassee here). The now-abandoned rail line serves as the popular Tallahassee-St. Marks Historic Railroad Trail State Park—a paved 16+-mile bicycle and equestrian trail terminating at the St. Marks waterfront."

Carter and I plan to ride our bicycles on this trail soon.


Sunrise from our dock.
 
 

Monday, October 21, 2013

Apalachicola, Florida - October 13-18

We arrived in Apalachicola on Sunday night and decided to stay a couple days.  We stopped for a day on our last trip through but it wasn't enough to explore all we wanted to see.  After spending a couple nights in the anchorage across from the waterfront, we were invited to tie up to the dock at the Apalachicola Maritime Museum which we gratefully accepted.

 
 


We highly recommend a visit there to learn about the maritime history of the area, take a boat tour or rent a kayak, and of course you have to tour the primary exhibit of the museum, the 58' Hershoff design wooden ketch named the Heritage of Apalachicola. You'll find much more information on their website http://www.ammfl.org/. Thank you George Floyd and your super nice manager, Jenni, for your gracious hospitality. We look forward to returning soon.

 

 
We took a ride on the whaler to take in the sites of the waterfront.
 
 
This was the view from the bow of the Archimedes while moored at the Museum. 
Nice front yard view.  Don't you agree?
 




 
Look closely at this boat.  That is a motorcycle up on the deck...right next to a second dinghy.
Wish THAT was ME!











 
Liquor, pottery, marine supplies...
You can find it all at the Honey Hole right on the waterfront!
 
 
 











 
 
 You sure don't see this everyday on the water!  That is a house, complete with potted plant moving somewhere to the other side of the bridge!

Just after sunrise Friday morning, we departed Apalachicola heading for St. Marks.
 

Tuesday, October 8, 2013

Update - October 5 - 8, 2013

Sunset at St. Andrews Marina

Saturday, October 5th

We ended up moving from St. Andrews Marina back to Massalina Bayou due to the threat of tropical storm Karen's arrival.  You just can't predict Mother Nature and therefore she must be respected. 

We had a very busy day preparing for the move. It was the first real day off Carter had since he started Sea School and with storm Karen on the way, we decided to take care of business before heading for cover in Massalina Bayou. 
 
Before leaving St. Andrews Sound, we stopped off at St. Andrews Marina and filled the water tanks, emptied the holding tank, washed the dirty laundry, and took a couple of on shore, long showers! St. Andrews Marina is a great facility with super clean showers and laundry facility and super nice people!   We highly recommend it.  Karen weakened long before reaching us and turned out to be a non-event but it's better to be safe than sorry and the dead calm bayou was a nice change from the bouncing sound. 

Sunday, October 6th

We packed up Sunday afternoon and headed out by car for Carter to participate in CleanEnergyCongress.org in Tallahassee.  This was an event sponsored by ReThink Energy Florida (ReThinkEnergyFlorida.org) and Southern Alliance for Clean Energy (SACE.org) for the purpose of developing a vision for Florida's Energy Future and policy recommendations to the legislature. Carter was flattered to be invited to participate as a delegate and said the experience was very enlightening. It really is amazing how screwed up and unfair the system is for consumers. Outdated Florida laws that blatantly protect the monopoly of investor owned utilities are stifling innovation and ruining the unique opportunity that the "Sunshine" state has to be a world leader in solar energy development.  
 
Tuesday, October 8th

Sea School is over and Carter has completed the courses to obtain his 50 ton Masters license. The only detail left is to get his Transportation Workers Identification Card, (TWIC), which he can't do until the Federal government opens up again but he has a year from the time he finished the school so hopefully the government will be open again by then. If not, not getting a captain's license probably won't matter.  We are eager for our return to St. Marks to complete a few more projects on the boat before embarking on the remainder of our solar powered passage around Florida!